


These Little Things (That Guide Me to You)

by huldrejenta



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: hd_erised, Falling In Love, HP: EWE, M/M, Pining, Post-Hogwarts, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-08 16:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5504348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huldrejenta/pseuds/huldrejenta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry realises his true feelings for Malfoy just as Malfoy goes travelling to find himself. Sometimes love means letting someone go. Sometimes going away will show you where your true home is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Little Things (That Guide Me to You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leontina (Leontina)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leontina/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, dear leontinabowie! I wish I could've given you a longer fic, but I do hope you enjoy this.  
> Many thanks to the mods for all their amazing work and to the lovely A for beta reading! ♥

At first Harry wonders if he’s made a terrible mistake.

He immediately recognises Malfoy, even though it’s from the back. There’s no mistaking the white-blond hair and that particular way he’s shuffling his feet, resting his weight on first one leg, then the other, awkwardly, like he’s never got quite used to his long limbs and keeps trying to adjust. 

Harry’s pulse quickens in his ears. This is a really bad idea. Being impulsive is one thing, but this might be stretching it, even for him. What was he thinking, saying yes to this?

Then Malfoy turns around, slowly. He looks just like he used to: elegant and composed, with nothing but his leg-shuffling to indicate that Harry might not be the only one feeling out of his depths. When Malfoy’s eyes land on Harry, he smiles, softly, and it’s enough to tell Harry there’s no way he could’ve done anything but come here. 

“Hello, Potter.”

“Hello, yourself.”

“Welcome to Edinburgh.”

They don’t say anything else as they walk down the narrow street, side by side, heading for the pub where Draco is staying. But for now, those words seem to be enough. 

The warmth from the pub embraces Harry once they’re inside, helping him to relax.

“Come on, you must meet the others.” Malfoy takes hold of Harry’s elbow and leads him towards a table in the corner. The pub is dimly lit and very cosy, with candles everywhere and animated talking filling the room. It’s not a place Harry would’ve pictured as Malfoy’s hangout, but then again, there are a whole lot of things he doesn’t know about this man.

“There he is!” someone yells across the room. “There’s Potter!” It takes Harry a few seconds to recognise the man as Blaise Zabini. 

“Here I am,” he says sheepishly as he slides in beside Zabini, eying the rest of the crowd. There’s Millicent Bulstrode, Pansy Parkinson, and two sturdy guys he’s never seen before. He gives them all a wave, wonders for a second what they must be thinking about his presence, but before he can give it any more thought, Malfoy sits down right across from him with a questioning look in his eyes. 

The rest of them can think what they like, Harry decides. As long as Malfoy is fine with him being here, that’s all that matters.

“Okay?” Malfoy says quietly, and Harry nods.

It really is okay.

The evening turns out to be surprisingly pleasant. Fun, even. Not terribly unlike evenings out having a good time with Ron and Hermione. Harry would never have guessed.

Bulstrode is telling everyone about a spider living in her bathroom. “The thing just stood there, on the wall, and it’s stayed in the room ever since. It’s the sweetest creature, and we’ve grown very close.”

“I would never let anything like that stay in my bathroom,” Parkinson says. “The thought of those spider-eyes staring at me... ugh.”

“You do know that a spider is incapable of forming friendships with a human being?” Zabini says in a knowledgeable fashion Harry can easily imagine he uses quite a lot. 

“That’s what you think,” says Bulstrode just as one of the guys Harry has yet to talk to yells, “Like fuck they can!” 

Malfoy throws his head back and laughs. It’s a sight to behold, and Harry joins in, more from the warmth spreading in his body than from the good-natured teasing that’s being thrown back and forth. Malfoy nudges him with his foot underneath the table. It can easily pass as a friendly gesture, but the low thrum of heat somewhere in Harry’s belly wants to insist that it’s more.

A few drinks later, everyone is giddy and even louder than when Harry joined them. Zabini has just finished entertaining them singing a surprisingly crude song that made them all howl with laughter. Parkinson has put a boot-clad foot onto Bulstrode’s lap, and the two other guys are rocking back on their chair legs. 

Malfoy’s face is happy and open in a way Harry has hardly ever seen before. He leans across the table and brushes Harry’s cheek with hot breath as he whispers into his ear.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Harry is too. 

***

Before he came here, during the time between admitting to himself that he might just have the teensiest crush on Malfoy and receiving the invitation to join him in Edinburgh, Harry used to dream about a never ending blue sky. He dreamed about the vastness of it, of gliding through the open air, up, up, up, until he could touch the clouds if he were to stretch out his arm and reach for them. 

It wasn’t flying he dreamed about, no, this was something different. This was all about gentle winds carrying him off the ground, guiding him somewhere calm and peaceful, where nothing grey was able to seep under his skin. Somewhere the sun never stopped covering him with its light.

When he woke up, it was always with a lingering sense of... not sadness, exactly, but a prickle in his mind that refused to let go. A sensation of missing something. 

“I can’t tell you what it means,” said Hermione when he told her. “Maybe it does mean something, or maybe it’s just your subconscious having a ball creating a riddle for you to ponder. Maybe it means that you’re bored?”

It didn’t sound like a half-bad explanation. He could admit that he was a bit bored at times. He had yet to find a job he enjoyed enough to want to keep, and there might be more evenings spent alone these days than he would’ve preferred. 

Of course, he’d never told Hermione about Malfoy, or else she would probably have connected the dots. As it was now, she might be perceptive, but not a mind reader.

He wasn’t certain why he hadn’t told her or Ron, except there wasn’t really a lot to tell. Vague emotions he couldn’t even name and a sense that his grown-up life consisted of a string of missed opportunities, didn’t really create a fascinating story. 

Because nothing had ever happened with Malfoy. They had a few fun evenings together after they’d unexpectedly bumped into each other’s lives again, certainly. Fun evenings in the most platonic sense of the word. And as fate would have it, Harry’s realisation that he wasn’t too happy about how platonic their evenings were dawned on him just around the time when Malfoy announced he would soon leave London. 

Apparently he had grand plans to travel through Europe. 

“Alphabetically,” he said. “One city for each letter in the alphabet. I’ll start with Amsterdam, or Aberdeen, maybe, then go to Bucharest, Copenhagen... well, that’s as far as I’ve figured it out. I’m really excited about it.”

A few weeks later, Malfoy was gone, and Harry was left with burning questions and lingering memories that didn’t serve him well. Memories of soft glances across their pints and arms pressed close together when they fought their way through the Saturday night crowd at the Leaky. 

Daytime-Harry did his best to think about other things.

Night time-Harry obviously had other ideas. The dreams didn’t stop, and he tried his best to tuck them away the minute he woke up.

*** 

When they’re all ready to call it a night, Bulstrode gives everyone a hug. She pulls them in and tells them how she thinks the world of them. There’s a tiny pause when she reaches Harry, a slight hesitation, but then she opens her arms and hugs him as warmly as the others.

“If Draco wants you here,” she says, “you can’t be too bad.”

The next second they’re all gone to wherever it is that they’re sleeping. Only Malfoy is left. He’s just said goodnight to Parkinson, and he turns to Harry with a mellow smile. 

“It seems I got the best for last,” he says as he pulls Harry in for a quick hug. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Harry says before he heads for his room, wondering how he’d been able to fool himself into thinking that their time apart had dulled his passion for this man even a little bit.

*** 

They’d met each other at a Hogwarts reunion party. It was the first time they’d talked since just after the war. One of the biggest surprises to Harry, besides how they were now able to spend time together without wanting to start a fist fight, was how naturally flirtatious Malfoy was. Harry had never seen this part of him before. 

Malfoy still is. He’s pretty much the biggest flirt Harry has ever met. He laughs and smiles, winks at people and confuses the shit out of Harry. It’s not easy to read someone who acts like everyone he talks to is the centre of his universe.

“You’ve made it all the way to E on your tour,” Harry says the next day as they walk through the narrow streets of old Edinburgh. “I’m impressed.”

“Oh, I’m planning to see this through. Having friends joining me from time to time makes it all the more fun.”

Parkinson is walking with them, and Malfoy has thrown an arm casually over her shoulder. Harry wonders if the moments where Malfoy directs all his intensity towards him, because there certainly are those moments as well, are simply Malfoy being Malfoy, or if they’re something more. 

He worries constantly about reading too much into things and tries to remind himself that he’s here because a friend invited him to join the European tour for a while, now that Malfoy was so close to London.

Obviously he’s asked a number of friends the same.

So Harry tries not to over-analyse how come the two of them end up sitting a little too close or why Malfoy lets his hand linger on Harry’s forearm when he leans in to tell him something. He tries really hard to just act natural, but it isn’t easy to know what constitutes natural these days. He ends up second-guessing the smallest things, wondering if it’s too much, too friendly, too close.

“Anyone up for a coffee?” 

They’ve arrived at a quaint little coffee shop Malfoy claims every citizen of Edinburgh is raving about. When they step inside and he returns from the counter with some hazelnut-thing for Parkinson and a cappuccino, extra foam for Harry (someone has been paying attention), Harry’s last doubts melt away. 

This isn’t just a crush anymore. He’s falling in love. It’s the most terrifying realisation he’s had in a long time.

*** 

It’s all these little things that make his heart fall open and keep drawing him in. It’s the way Malfoy drags his hand through his hair and how he pours sugar into his tea. It’s the way he leans into every conversation as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever heard. It’s how he now, as a young adult, chooses to use his clever tongue and quick wit to lift people up instead of bringing them down, and how he still manages to seem imposing without meaning to. 

The first time they kiss, it’s early morning. 

They’ve been for a quick walk outside. It’s the day after they visited the coffee shop and something in Harry’s chest snaps when Malfoy knocks on his door and asks if he wants to join his usual pre-breakfast stroll.

Back outside of Harry’s door, he is embarrassingly short of breath (whether it’s because of the walk or the company is open to interpretation), laughing from a story about Zabini locking himself out while he was wearing an outfit not meant to be worn in public. 

Malfoy rests his hand against Harry’s arm, letting light touches linger, and Harry has no idea what to do with them. Malfoy smiles, leaning just a little bit closer.

“Hello, there,” says Harry. “Er... is this...”

Malfoy smiles wider. “I very much hope so,” he says, with a hint of a tremble in his voice, a tremble which is exactly what Harry needs to find the courage to lean in. Their lips meet, slowly. It’s nice and soft, nothing at all like the fuming storm inside of Harry. When Malfoy pulls back, Harry bites the insides of his mouth to stop himself from plunging in again. 

“Oh,” he says instead.

“Quite,” says Malfoy, and then, when Bulstrode is approaching from down the corridor, “To be continued, hmm?” and steps away.

Harry tilts his head back against the door and exhales, wondering if he’s the only one who feels like he’s drowning. And what’s worse, he doesn’t even want to fight the waves pulling him under.

*** 

“I don’t think I’m the relationship type of person,” Malfoy had said once, before he went travelling. 

They had been to a Quidditch match together and were walking around with no particular goal besides enjoying the company, both of them still full of post-match elation and high spirits. Their hands brushed against each other as they walked along quiet pavements in the late night. 

Harry had never been aware that he could want someone so suddenly, or rather, that the realisation of it could hit him with such force. Like a well-aimed spell, impossible to dodge. 

How was he to reach inside for courage and dust off his best flirtatious tone? It had been so long.

And then Malfoy decided to say that. 

“Why do you think so?” Harry asked instead of whatever pathetic attempt to flirt he would’ve come up with.

“I don’t know. I need some time alone, to figure things out. Find out who I am, what’s left when you take away the layers of family ties and obligation and old wounds. I thought I’d go travelling. Maybe I’ll come back eventually, I probably will. But right now, the idea of anyone tying me to one place isn’t very appealing.”

A few weeks later, Malfoy left for Amsterdam to begin his European tour. Harry started dreaming about being lifted off the ground, floating anywhere without having to stay put in one particular place.

*** 

“I’m going home tomorrow morning,” says Parkinson. “As lovely as this has been, I was only supposed to stay for two or three days, and now it’s been almost a week.”

Has it really?

Zabini and Bulstrode nod in agreement. They’ll be going too, even though Bulstrode grumbles about how she’s going to miss the spider in her bathroom. Those two other guys from the first night have long since moved on, and it dawns on Harry that he’s the only one who’s able to stay a little while longer.

Malfoy complains about them leaving and throws his arms across his friends’ shoulders. 

Twelve hours ago, he and Malfoy kissed against Harry’s door. Harry still has no idea what to do with it, but he suspects that doing nothing might be the healthiest choice for him.

Two hours later, when the others have gone to sleep early, they kiss again. It’s heady and potent, and Harry wonders how anyone who’s ever been kissed by Malfoy could possibly avoid wanting more.

*** 

Once they’re alone in Edinburgh, they explore more of the city together. They visit castles and take slow strolls through the alleyways leading off the main streets. Harry talks more, and sometimes Malfoy kisses Harry’s cheek mid-story. He plays with Harry’s hair when they share an after-dinner pint and smiles into Harry’s neck when he leans in to say goodnight.

The first time Malfoy fucks him, they’re both a little drunk. They stumble across the doorstep to Malfoy’s room after a long evening of giddy flirting, and they fumble a bit to get each other’s clothes off. It’s awkward and strange and over too fast, and yet utterly lovely. 

“Potter,” Malfoy pants, and in this moment, with Malfoy’s skin covering his own, Harry thinks he could do anything to hear that sound again.

When Malfoy falls asleep, pliant and warm against him, Harry lies awake, watching him breathe. Wondering if Malfoy will chalk the whole thing up to being drunk the next day.

Malfoy doesn’t, he says nothing about it at all. 

“I should move on to F soon,” he says instead. They’re having breakfast, and Harry’s toast immediately feels dry in his mouth, harder to chew.

“I haven’t really decided what city I’ll visit for F. Frankfurt, maybe? Or Florence?” 

“When will you go?”

Malfoy shrugs, like he isn’t too bothered one way or the other, but he lets his hand land on top of Harry’s before he takes a sip from his tea. Harry wants to scream, _stop it with the mixed signals, will you, please?_ But of course he doesn’t. He’s an adult, and apparently being an adult means late night fucks and pretending to forget about them the morning after.

“I might go in a week or so,” says Malfoy as he withdraws his hand again.

Harry must go home soon as well, he supposes. He can’t really defend staying any longer, to himself or to anyone else. 

It seems that a few days are all the two of them have got left together. Something in the back of his mind tells him this is a bad decision, but he pulls at the threads that hold his heart together and tie them in a secure knot. If these days with Malfoy are all he’s going to get, he’d better make them count.

*** 

They don’t talk about how they’ll soon be going their separate ways. 

They spend their time lying side by side on their backs in quiet parks, watching the clouds. They visit museums and galleries and pavement cafés with expensive pastries. 

Malfoy tries to find a nice tattoo parlour, but so far he’s not happy with the quality of the ones he’s located. He’s decided to get one tattoo for each city he visits. “It’s a part of my liberation process,” he says, “don’t question it.”

At night, they make out underneath the open skies. Ignoring reality is surprisingly easy with Malfoy’s warm breath against the skin of his neck.

The evening before Harry is to go back home, Malfoy pins him to the bed and fucks him in slow, steady thrusts. He lowers himself over Harry and angles his hips a little differently until he hits that special spot that turns Harry into a shivering mess. Harry’s arms quiver under Malfoy’s palm.

Harry can’t stop himself from making these whimpering sounds that would’ve been embarrassing had he been able to care. He can practically hear the racing pulse through his veins. Malfoy growls into Harry’s mouth, closes his eyes and whispers: “I don’t want anyone else to see you like this.”

Harry comes to the sound of Malfoy’s stuttering breath and muffled whispers.

Afterwards, Malfoy holds Harry close for a minute before he starts shifting around, nervously, unable to find a good position. Like his thoughts are keeping him awake. When they wake up the next morning, Malfoy lies near the edge of the bed, as far away from Harry as possible. 

Harry says to himself it might be a coincidence. The thing is, he knows it’s not. 

Because none of the things that stand between them has changed. Malfoy is still unwilling to be in a relationship. He’s still leaving for some city that starts with an F. And Harry is still going home today.

“I got you something,” Malfoy says when they say goodbye. “It’s nothing much. You can open it when you get back home.”

“I didn’t get you anything,” Harry says through the lump in his throat.

“You can give me a smile.” 

Harry tries, he really does, but he suspects that he fails miserably.

*** 

Once he’s home, it takes a while for Harry to start dreaming about the open skies again. It’s like Malfoy is still with him in everything he does, and his dreams haven’t yet realised that he’s alone.

He opens the gift from Malfoy and smiles shakily when he pulls out coffee beans from the coffee shop they went to with Parkinson. The most exquisite ones, of course, Malfoy being Malfoy. 

It seems Harry isn’t the only one who thinks that night was special. 

Bulstrode comes to see him one evening. It’s surprising, but nice, and they go to grab something to eat and catch up. She asks about her spider and is disappointed when Harry must confess that he has no idea.

“It’s always been you for Draco, you know,” she says later as she swallows the last of her pasta. “Even back at Hogwarts, it was always you. And when the two of you started hanging out after you met at the school reunion, it was obvious to me how his feelings grew stronger.”

Harry finds that rather hard to believe. “He seems awfully set on remaining free and single for someone who’s always wanted to be with me.”

“Well,” she says, “he could want both things, couldn’t he? You can crave that special tug of lust in your stomach when you meet someone new and interesting, and you can love the freedom of being unbound and restless, figuring out who you want to be. Doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing you feel. It doesn’t make you immune to wanting waking up every morning with someone beloved on the pillow next to yours, or longing for someone’s sock-clad feet in your lap as you read a book together.”

She picks up her napkin and twirls it around her fingers. “It’s not so strange if Draco feels himself being pulled in more than one direction. The fact that he wants you interferes with his plans and what he thinks he ought to be doing.”

It does make sense, Harry supposes, not that it does him a whole lot of good. If this is how Malfoy feels, he needs to start figuring out what he wants.

And Harry suspects it’s something Malfoy needs to do on his own.

*** 

_Today I went to see the sculptures we talked about, the renaissance ones. It wasn’t the same going to a gallery without you, even if it is in Florence._

The owl’s note doesn’t quite silence Harry’s yearning, but it does make the day infinitely brighter.

*** 

“I think we should go out,” Ron says when Harry has been back home a couple of weeks. “It’s been too long.” 

Harry quite agrees. He misses having his friends around, and he wonders if letting too much time pass between every time they see each other is what adulthood and being in serious relationships will do to you. 

“I miss hanging out with you.” Ron mirrors his thoughts exactly before asking Harry, not for the first time, to consider joining him and George working in the shop.

“I’ll think about it,” Harry says, and he will. 

They end up a whole group of them, the old bunch, going for a proper pub crawl. It’s loud and it’s fun, and when Harry gets home, he writes a note that says _I miss you, Draco._

The next morning he wakes to find that he never attached the note onto the owl’s leg and wonders for a fleeting moment if he should do it now.

He decides against it. Surely, there’s no great demand in this world for notes written while being drunk and too emotional for his own good. 

*** 

_I saw a street musician today. He had black, messy hair and a pair of glasses that didn’t suit him. He was cute. He made me think of you._

And then, a second owl not long after the first one:

_Not that I need much encouragement to think about you._

Harry tries not to let it get to him too deeply, but it’s not easy.

*** 

_I need to find a city that begins with a G. I can’t think of any. Do you think Grimmauld Place qualifies as a city?_

Daring to believe in Malfoy’s note must be what cutting the lifeline feels like. But there’s hardly any time to worry about what it may or may not mean before the next note arrives.

_I shouldn’t have written that. Forget it._

Harry doesn’t hear from Malfoy again for weeks. Plenty of time to convince himself that the battle is lost.

He wonders how Malfoy has managed to attach himself so firmly into his mind and heart and dreams, but there it is. Letting Malfoy in any further would make him impossible to ever get out again.

The thought of it scares Harry far less that it probably should.

He tries to be proactive, doing his best to absorb the pain from Malfoy’s silence. When Ron repeats his job offer, Harry decides to take him up on it. Working with Ron and George turns out to be loads of fun. Keeping up with everything in the shop is more of a challenge than he’s imagined, but it keeps him busy, which is always a good thing.

He’s doing fine.

Life is good.

At night he dreams, and he wakes up with images of joy just out of his reach, whispering seductive words of hope into his ears.

*** 

It’s been months since he last heard from Malfoy when he notices the unfamiliar owl waiting for him.

_Istanbul is big and loud. I think I’ve had enough for now._

**Enough of what?**

_Of travelling. Of drifting. Of searching for something I suspect can’t be found out here._

_Every little thing reminds me of you._

This must be what thawing after a long winter feels like. 

The ice around Harry’s heart isn’t quite broken, not yet. But with every note, it keeps getting thinner.

He spends an hour forming his reply and sends it before he can change his mind.

**Are you coming back?**

His hands quiver when he opens the reply.

_If you’ll still have me._

Harry blinks rapidly and searches for the right words to express how he feels. How much he’s missed Malfoy. How much he loves him. He ends up with two words.

**Come home.**

He receives one word back.

_Yes._

It’s the most perfect word Harry can think of. Sometimes, one word is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! You can show your appreciation for the author in a comment here or on [Livejournal](http://hd-erised.livejournal.com/60699.html). ♥
> 
> This story is part of an on-going anonymous fest hosted at [hd_erised @ livejournal.com](http://hd_erised.livejournal.com/). The author will be revealed January 8th.
> 
> I'm also on [LiveJournal](http://huldrejenta.livejournal.com/profile/) and [Tumblr](http://huldrejenta.tumblr.com/) :) Feel free to say hi!


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